The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economics Die

Best-selling author and world-renowned historian Niall Ferguson has won widespread acclaim for thought-provoking works such as Civilization and High Financier. The Great Degeneration tackles nothing less than the decline of Western civilization. Ferguson posits that slowing growth, outrageous debt, and antisocial behavior are contributing to the erosion of the West’s once rock-solid foundations. Ferguson excavates the causes and shows how heroic leadership and radical reform are needed to right the course.

Civilization: The West and the Rest

The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing proportion of people now work for Western-style companies, study at Western-style universities, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and even work Western hours. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed unlikely to achieve much more than perpetual internecine warfare. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations.

The Pity of War: Explaining World War One

In The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson makes a simple and provocative argument: that the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. Britain, according to Ferguson, entered into war based on nave assumptions of German aims-and England's entry into the war transformed a Continental conflict into a world war, which they then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement.

Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in the Global Markets

This updated edition of Inside the House of Money lifts the veil on the typically opaque world of hedge funds, offering a rare glimpse at how today's highest paid money managers approach their craft. Now with new commentary, author Steve Drobny takes you even further into the hedge fund industry. He demystifies how these star traders make billions for their well-heeled investors, revealing their theories, strategies and approaches to markets.

The History of Money

From primitive man's cowrie shells to the electronic cash card, from the markets of Timbuktu to the New York Stock Exchange, The History of Money explores how money and the myriad forms of exchange have affected humanity, and how they will continue to shape all aspects of our lives--economic, political, and personal.

High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg

In this groundbreaking new biography, based on more than 10,000 hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, best-selling author Niall Ferguson returns to his roots as a financial historian to tell the story of Siegmund Warburg, an extraordinary man whose austere philosophy of finance offers much insight today.

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II

In what is sure to become the standard account, Rothbard traces inflations, banking panics, and money meltdowns from the colonial period through the mid-20th century to show how government's systematic war on sound money is the hidden force behind nearly all major economic calamities in American history. Never has the story of money and banking been told with such rhetorical power and theoretical vigor. You will treasure this volume.

The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy

Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his 10 years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society. In The End of Alchemy, he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

An Economic History of the World since 1400

Most of us have a limited understanding of the powerful role economics has played in shaping human civilization. This makes economic history - the study of how civilizations structured their environments to provide food, shelter, and material goods - a vital lens through which to think about how we arrived at our present, globalized moment. Designed to fill a long-empty gap in how we think about modern history, these 48 lectures are a comprehensive journey through more than 600 years of economic history.

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

Until the election of Woodrow Wilson the United States - alone among developed nations - lacked a central bank. Ever since the Revolutionary War, Americans had desperately feared the consequences of centralizing the nation's finances under government control. However, in the aftermath of a disastrous financial panic, Congress was persuaded - by a confluence of populist unrest, widespread mistrust of bankers, ideological divisions, and secretive lobbying - to approve the landmark 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

Kissinger: Volume I: 1923-1968: The Idealist

No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Once hailed as "Super-K" - the "indispensable man" whose advice has been sought by every president from Kennedy to Obama - he has also been hounded by conspiracy theorists, scouring his every "telcon" for evidence of Machiavellian malfeasance. Yet as Niall Ferguson shows in this magisterial biography, the idea of Kissinger as the ruthless arch-realist is based on a profound misunderstanding.

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the gripping saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.

The Wealth of Nations

The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from 45 to 72 years. The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era.

isaiah says:"The book is a great review of how we got to where we are today"

Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

James C. Samans says:"Transformative to the point of being revolutionary"

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse

Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian, one of the world's most influential economic thinkers and the author of When Markets Collide, has written a road map to what lies ahead and the decisions we must make now to stave off the next global economic and financial crisis. Our current economic path is coming to an end. The signposts are all around us: sluggish growth, rising inequality, stubbornly high pockets of unemployment, and jittery financial markets, to name a few. Soon we will reach a fork in the road.

Capitalism and Freedom

Milton Friedman argues that the appropriate role of competitive capitalism occurs when the majority of our economic activity flows through private enterprise within a free-market environment. This is unequivocally the most effective device for achieving economic freedom, as well as the necessary condition in which political freedom can be attained. Friedman's arguments are positively bold, enlightening, and impacting. Among the specific topics he addresses are "The Control of Money", "Fiscal Policy", "Capitalism and Discrimination", and "Social Welfare Measures".

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis

Since 2014, international monetary agencies have been issuing warnings to a small group of finance ministers, banks, and private equity funds: The US government's cowardly choices not to prosecute J.P. Morgan and its ilk and to bloat the economy with a $4 trillion injection of easy credit are driving us headlong toward a cliff. As Rickards shows in this frightening, meticulously researched book, governments around the world have no compunction about conspiring against their citizens.

Amazon Customer says:"worth reading for those interested in economics"

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the Earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism?

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Audible Editor Reviews

The Ascent of Money is a fast-paced, superbly written, and richly informative excursion through tableaus, themes, scenes, and events that mark the financial history of the world. Included are substantial details on the fiscal meltdown in progress in May 2008, before the book went to press, adding a 21st century variation on the theme of financial collapses detailed in The Ascent of Money. Niall Ferguson has written an exciting panorama of finance that is also very much a book for our times. This is history as global financial drama, of advancing financial development, and the always recurring back stories of financial decline and debacle. It is a book orchestrated as much as written. The Ascent of Money demands a narrator with the range of talents necessary for bringing to voice the rich orchestration of Ferguson's prose. Enter, stage right, Simon Prebble.

With his rich, versatile, and expressive British tenor voice (and his 300+ unabridged narrations in a variety of genres), Prebble is Ascent's perfect narrator. From the first sentence of the Introduction  "Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: call it what you like, money matters."  to the last sentence of the Afterword  "It is not the fault of the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty."  Prebble delivers the authentic voice of this financial history. Applying here an altered nuance of phrasing, there the shortest of a shift of timing and slant of intonation, and everywhere present the voice's active tonal center, Prebble drives Ferguson's historical narrative forward. In a print book the reading eye catches, and the mind registers - at places only subliminally - meanings that are too subtle to be directly communicated. By his command and application of stored registries of articulation, expression, and ranges of emotion, Prebble clearly shows that he belongs with the best of narrators who can tap into and reflect and suggest the visual acuity that registers in the mind when reading and narrating. David Chasey

Publisher's Summary

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential back story behind all history.

Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.

This book was written in the earliest days of the current financial crisis, and completed sometime around May, 2008. As a result, it is both quite prescient about the causes of the current unraveling of the world financial system, and a bit out-of-date as so much has changed in the months since the book was published. If you are looking for something to explain the way that the current financial system was developed for the past three hundred years, and how the roots of the current crash go back deep into the history of finance, this book is an excellent and entertaining guide. It will introduce you to everything from the causes of the 1980s S&L scandals to the birth of investment banks to the inflationary pressures caused by the Spanish conquest of the New World, and demonstrate how these concepts are related to the current financial system. You will learn that crashes have always happened, and likely always will, so the book succeeds well as current commentary.

It is somewhat less successful as history of money, however, since the sections of the book, each named after a different type of financial instrument from insurance to bonds, are not really detailed histories of each topic, but rather a series of vignettes that illuminate a concept in the development of a particular financial instrument. The book focuses on the Rothschild family to explain the history of banking, the rise of Pinochet to explain the role of free markets, and so on. These stories are interesting and important, but they make the book feel more disjointed than a typical linear history. Similarly, the level of detail of the book fluctuates between fairly popular descriptions and very detailed statistics.

Overall, if you are either motivated to learn about the financial system, or you have a general interest in financial history, this is a wonderful book. Those who are less interested in the details, or who expect a complete account of the ascent of money, may be less impressed.

A) Great narrator: British, droll, charming.
B) I am a history and casual econ nerd so this book was a perfect fit. Most of the book, which focuses on the rise of banking, currencies, international trading, and all that comes with, was absolutely fascinating. Well-researched, and well-presented. I'm not sure how confusing some of the topics would be to grasp for someone with no background in finance, but it shouldn't be too much of a chanllenge.
C) The part of the book I found less interesting was the last 1/4 which focused more on our current economic situation and how we got there. It's a pretty well-worn topic and Ferguson, while walking through the subject with great descriptions and personal stories, doesn't really shed any new light on the topic.
Overall, a fascinating and educational listen.

As a student of and a trader in the Futures and Equities Markets, I am surprised to see in this book, an accurate, insightful, and sane exposition of what the markets are, whence they came, how they interact, their beauties and pitfalls, and wither they might go from here. Almost everything else written on this subject is gruel for the masses. This book is a repast of intelligence and clear thinking. My only regret is the public could not have had this book a year earlier. Politicians and the press & media just obfuscate and blather about the economy, but this is an extraordinary book that will educate all. As we go into a very, very bad time economically, the author gives an excellent presentation of the history and meaning of money in its varied forms that will help and guide the reader in making choices and in voicing their concerns and needs to their elected representatives.

After hearing the author on the Conversations with History podcast I decided to pick up the book. The book is informative but so dry in places that the ah-hah moments were strategically placed oases. It took a pair of multi-week breaks to get through it. I don't regret it because I do think the book is one that the well read person should have under their belt but my goodness, it was hard to get through! I truly hope I am in the minority on this.

This book is not so much about money but finance, which is too bad as I thought it would be about the former. The authour should have called it the Ascent of Finance.

Dealing with such a large subject in a book this size is an impossible feat and I don't think the authour pulls it off. It hops around too much without any clear message, and when you wished the authour would zoom in on something to better explain it he jumps to a different topic.

I think A Splendid Exchange by Peter Bernstein is a better history of economics/finance book by a long shot.

We are all self-appointed experts when it comes to money (or at least real estate), but none of us really knows much history. For if we knew the history of booms and busts, bonds and equities, risk and insurance then we may all be a little less likely to jump into the latest bubble, and a little more likely to question our own "expertise". I admire Ferguson for taking on a big topic, and for his willingness to provide a grand sweep of history that reflects and helps us understand our current recession.

The book was apparently written to accompany a documentary series, and it certainly reads that way. This is good and bad...and the narrative moves along quickly and big lessons are drawn - while at times leaving the reader wanting more analysis. One question that the author poses keeps coming back to me - have we been living through a "super bubble" from the 1950s to today, which will see a slow deflation in our lifetimes as property values stagnate and China is no longer willing to fund our consumption through their savings?

As a non-financial background type person, i thought this was very enlightening, since i never think about concepts like these. While a little boring at times, overall, it opened my mind to a new way of conceptualizing what finance is all about. Also, the lessons of the book are really valuable: the regularity with which events like the current financial situation have recurred is a lesson to anyone who wants to invest or consider saving his/her own personal funds.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand how money works: the past, the present, and the future. I watched the author on TV one late night and he was impressive. Niall Ferguson did a good job by providing solid examples that leaves the listener/reader spell-bound by the depth of his research and the simplistic way he communicated his knowledge.

This is not a history of money (currency) but rather attempts to be a complete financial history, and so is really an economic history of Europe and the Western World.

Yes, it is fascinating to know how the advent of credit and financial innovation revolutionized Europe and the New World and is the "back story" of most of Western World History since the 1300s. However, I think the book is mis-titled, and does not explore the non-Euro-centric world in any revealing way.